"Granny, can we plunder?" I can still hear us now. My cousin & I were spending the night with our grandmother and wanted to plunder through her stuff. And my, what stuff she had!! There's no doubt that my love of plundering/junking/picking...whatever you want to call it...comes from her. She is the one, after all, that introduced me to the art.
We would sit together on a Thursday or Friday evening and go through the newspaper, looking at the yard sale ads for the upcoming Saturday and circling the ones we wanted to hit. Then early Saturday morning she would pick me up and off we'd go. I didn't know any other young girls my age who were trading in their Saturday morning cartoons or the chance to sleep late for yard sales with their grandmother. But I was...and I loved every second of it.
That's why I knew that she had some really good stuff to plunder through. I had seen her bring it home and had been with her when she had bought a lot of it. She had drawers and closets and trunks full of stuff. But alas, as with any proud owner of stuff, she didn't want kids rifling through it, messing up the chaotic order she had it in, and likely losing or breaking something along the way. The answer was always no, but we never stopped asking. Every time we'd spend the night we'd ask again, hoping that maybe...just maybe...she'd break down and change her mind one day. She never did.
So while I never got the chance to plunder through my grandmother's stuff, I got something greater. I got to spend countless Saturday mornings with her, sharing something she loved, and learning the fine art of picking without even realizing it. And to this day I can't go to a yard sale or an estate sale without thinking of her and wishing she was there with me...so we could plunder together.
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